There are four conflicting types of philosophical therapies.
Following a well-known exponent of each type:

Normative Therapies

Normative therapies are directed against the kind of suffering,
which is caused by uncontrolled desires (e.g. obsession and aggression). The
interests of the individual (the struggle for love and power) are morally
degraded. The pessimistic worldview is overcome by changing the perception of
the world:

- Therapy of obsession: Buddha. Pessimism is
overcome by liberating from desires.

- Therapy of aggression: Stoics. Pessimism is overcome
by adopting an “objective” view.

Individualistic Therapies

Individualistic therapies are directed against the suffering, which
is caused by the repression of desires (e.g. alienation and fatalism).
The interests of the individual are morally defended.

- Therapy of alienation: Freud. The pessimistic
world view is simply ignored by falling back on biological resources:

- Therapy of fatalism: Nietzsche. The pessimistic world view is overcome by cultural perfectionism.

1. Introduction

Starting point

In the year 1755 - the ground rocked in Portugal; an event as innumerable others before. But with one peculiarity: it happened on
All Saint's Day at the hour of holy mass. Alone in Lisbon 30 churches collapsed
and the rubble buried the gathered faithful. The earthquake, the following
great fires, and the Tsunami-waves claimed tens of thousands of casualties. Was
it God's punishment for the "idolatry" of Catholic veneration of
saints? In fact, there have been voices that said so or correspondingly. But
not even three weeks later the earth quaked also in Boston, a centre of
American Puritanism, and demolished 15.000 houses. Also the interpretation as
"Allah's revenge" was pointless, since the big Al-Mansur-Mosque in Rabat had collapsed too. Now one had recourse to the "original sin". Voltaire,
infuriated at the utmost, answered with his famous poem "About Lisbon's
Catastrophe, or: An Examination of the Axiom 'Everything is Good' ", and
triggered by it worldwide discussions, that have not stopped up to this day.
Yes, at present (2005) in the commemoration year of Auschwitz, Armenia, Dresden and Hiroshima and with the
last natural disasters they make for new zeniths(Structure
and Dynamic of the Cosmos, Ludwig Ebersberger)

The following quotes
have reached publicity in the discussion about realistic worldviews:

▪“An optimist is a contemporary who is
insufficiently informed” (author unknown).

▪Those who find a purpose in our life, and an
order in the universe, which conforms to this purpose, are optimists

▪Those who don’t see a purpose are pessimists

[Svevo, 155]

If life and the
universe don’t have a higher purpose, we might still be able to create such a
purpose ourselves (e.g. the eradication of the worst cases of suffering). In this
paper the term cultural pessimism is associated with the belief that this
is impossible because cultural evolution cannot be controlled.

An optimist
thinks it is the best possible world in which we are living

▪The first sociological cycle theory was created
by Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo
Pareto (1848-1923) in his Trattato
di Sociologia Generale (1916). He centered his theory on the concept of elitesocial
class, which he divided into cunning 'foxes' and violent 'lions'. In his
view of society, the power constantly passes from 'foxes' to 'lions'
and vice versa.

▪Sociological cycle theory was developed by Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889-1968) in his Social and
Cultural Dynamics (1937, 1943). He classified societies according to their
'cultural mentality', which can be ideational (reality as spiritual), sensate
(reality is material), or idealistic (a synthesis of the two). He has
interpreted the contemporary West as a sensate civilisation dedicated to technological progress and prophesied its
fall into decadence and the emergence of a new ideational or idealistic era.

▪Among prominent historiosophers important is
Russian philosopher Nikolai Danilewski (1822-1885), who in Rossiia
i Europa (1869)
differentiated between various smaller civilizations
(Egyptian, Chinese, Persian, Greece, Roman, German, and Slav, among others). He
wrote that each civilization has a life cycle, and by the end of 19th
century the Roman-German civilization was in decline, while Slav
civilization was approaching its Golden Age

▪William James Durant
(1885-1981) was an American philosopher, historian, and writer, best known for his 11-volume work The Story of Civilization.. In his extensive studies on civilization he realized that humans
don’t change behavior in the course of time. In “Lessons of History” (1968) he
mentions in particular the ineradicable drive to lead wars. “War is a
historical constant and neither civilization nor democracy was capable
eliminating it from the world. In the 3400 years of known history there were
only 268 years without war.” (Fesselnde
Philosophie, Deutschlandradio)

▪Similar theory was put forward by Oswald
Spengler (1880-1936) who in the
Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes) (1918) also expected
that the Western civilisation was about to collapse.
The Decline of the West includes the idea of the Muslims being Magian, Mediterranean
civilizations of the antiquity such as Ancient
Greece and Rome being Apollonian, and the modern Westerners
being Faustian,
and according to its theories we are now living in the winter time of the
Faustian civilization. His description of the Faustian
civilization is where the populace constantly strives for the
unattainable—making the western man a proud but tragic figure, for while he
strives and creates he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached(The Decline of the West, Wikipedia)

▪Spengler's obscure thoughts, intuitionalism and
mysticism were easy targets for his critics. All attempts to find the meaning
of history had been denounced by the positivists and neo-Kantians of the late
nineteenth century as irresponsible metaphysical speculation. This attitude did
not change but was perhaps even hardened after the rise of neo-positivism and
analytic tradition. One of the exceptions was the Austrian/British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951), who shared Spengler's cultural pessimism, and confessed once that
he felt "intensely the terrible degeneration that had come over the human
spirit in the course of only a hundred years." (Oswald Spengler)

▪Towards the end of the 20th
century, cultural pessimism surfaced in a prominent way. The very title of Jacques
Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life,
1500 to the Present (2000) challenges the reader to be hopeful.

1)One of the most important recent findings in the
study of the long-term dynamic social processes was the discovery of the
political-demographic cycles as a basic feature of complex agrarian systems'
dynamics. The presence of political-demographic cycles in the pre-modern
history of Europe
and China, and in chiefdom level
societies worldwide has been known for quite a long time and already in the
1980s more or less developed mathematical models of demographic cycles
started to be produced. At the moment we have a very considerable number of
such models

2)Recently the most important contributions to the
development of the mathematical models of long-term ("secular")
sociodemographic cycles have been made by Sergey Nefedov, Peter
Turchin and Sergey Malkov. What is important is that on the basis of their
models the authors have managed to demonstrate that sociodemographic cycles
were a basic feature of complex agrarian systems (and not a specifically
Chinese or European phenomenon). The basic logic of these models is as follows:

a)After the population reaches the ceiling of the carrying
capacity of land, its growth rate declines toward near-zero values.

b)The system experiences significant stress with
decline in the living standards of the common population, increasing the
severity of famines, growing rebellions etc.

c)As has been shown by Nefedov, most complex
agrarian systems had considerable reserves for stability, however, within
50–150 years these reserves were usually exhausted and the system experienced a
demographic collapse (a Malthusian catastrophe), when increasingly
severe famines, epidemics, increasing internal warfare and other disasters led
to a considerable decline of population.

d)As a result of this collapse, free resources
became available, per capita production and consumption considerably increased,
the population growth resumed and a new
sociodemographic cycle started.

3)It has become possible to model these dynamics
mathematically in a rather effective way. Note that the modern theories of
political-demographic cycles do not deny the presence of trend dynamics and
attempt at the study of the interaction between cyclical and trend components
of historical dynamics. Modern social scientists from different fields have
introduced cycle theories to predict civilizational collapses in approaches
that apply contemporary methods that update the approach of Spengler,
such as the work of Joseph Tainter suggesting a civilizational
life-cycle. In more micro-studies that follow the work of Malthus, scholars
such as David Lempert have presented "alpha-helix"
models of population, economics, and political response, including violence, in
cyclical forms that add aspects of culture change into the model. Lempert has
also modeled political violence in Russian society, suggesting that theories
attributing violence in Russia to ideologies are less useful than cyclical
models of population and economic productivity

Though the term nihilism was popularized by the novelist Ivan
Turgenev (1818-1883), it was first introduced into philosophical discourse
by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743 – 1819),
who used it to characterize rationalism, and in particular Immanuel
Kant's (1724-1804) "critical" philosophy in order to carry out a reductio ad absurdum according to which all
rationalism (philosophy as criticism) reduces to nihilism, and thus should be
avoided and replaced with a return to some type of faith and revelation
(Nihilism, Wikipedia)

The loss of
faith is tied to a loss of hope, in particular the loss of a possible paradise.
There are several types of paradises:

▪The paradise in the Book of Genesis is a
repetition of daily life without its painful conditions. It is the ideal of an
agricultural society, i.e. a life undisturbed by crop failure, famine, illness
and death [Hahn, 110]. Different concepts of paradises mirror different
societies.

▪Some paradises represent better states in the
here and now, i.e. they represent memories of better times or expectations of a
better future. In societies with a complex structure, the concepts can even
differ within the same society. The general rule is the following: Social
classes in decline glorify the past and vice-versa. The belief in progress,
which is typical for the age of enlightenment,
mirrors the collective advancement of the bourgeoisie; the romantic
glorification of the past is the swan song of the disempowered
aristocracy [Hahn, 115]. Happiness is located in a place where society hasn’t
arrived yet or in a place where society was long time ago.

▪The New Testament says: “No one has seen the
paradise that is afforded to those who love the Lord”. This kind of paradise is
abstract to an extent which makes it impossible to even attempt a
falsification. On the other hand it is hardly attractive for non-philosophers and
non-theologians which are deeply in sorrow about their daily life. Abstract
paradises are made for religious virtuosos (Max Weber) [Hahn, 119].

All paradises
have one thing in common: once they are unmasked as wishful thinking, they
are lost forever.

Russian
nihilism

The Nihilist movement was a 1860s Russian
cultural movement which rejected existing authorities and values. After the
assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the Nihilists were
known throughout Europe as proponents of the use of violence as a tool for
political change (Nihilism,
Wikipedia)

▪A nihilist is a man who thinks of “the world as
it is” that it ought not to be, and of “the world as it ought to be”
that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action,
suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: the pathos of in vain is
the nihilists' pathos (Friedrich Nietzsche,
1844-1900, The Will to Power, section 585) (Nihilism, Wikipedia)

▪Stanley
Rosen identifies Nietzsche's equation of nihilism with "the situation
which obtains when everything is permitted." (…). Nietzsche asserts that
this nihilism is a result of valuing "higher", "divine" or
"meta-physical" things (such as God), that do not in turn value
"base", "human" or "earthly" things. But a person
who rejects God and the divine may still retain the belief that all
"base", "earthly", or "human" ideas are still
valueless because they were considered so in the previous belief system (such
as a Christian who becomes a communist and believes fully in the party
structure and leader). In this interpretation, any form of idealism, after being rejected
by the idealist, leads to nihilism (Define nihilistic)

Moral nihilism (also known as ethical
nihilism or amoralism) is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or
immoral. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for
whatever reason, is neither inherently right nor inherently wrong. Moral
nihilists consider morality to be make-believe, a complex set of rules and
recommendations that may give a psychological, social, or economic advantage to
its adherents, but is otherwise not in accord with fact or reality (Moral Nihilism,
Wikipedia)

Relation to
empiricism

Nietzsche’s God is dead was inspired by
empirical sciences in the 19th century (although Nietzsche did not
explicitly refer to science). Nietzsche replaced the metaphysical speculation
about otherworlds by the scientific speculation about eternal recurrence, a controversial
issue among the physicists at the time (see chapter 4.4).In a revised form, the speculation is still
going on. Following some recent theories, which suggest that the
universe does not require a Creator:

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me
that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really
bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate,
am convinced that He does not throw dice [Einstein].

In the meantime quantum theory has
become the most successful, peerlessly predictive theory of basic reality ever
devised. Wave functions
define the quantum
world in terms of probabilities and the transformation of possible states
into concrete states may be a question of probabilities as well. A recent
theory promoted by Daniel
Sudarsky suggests that wave functions are real entities – rather than just
knowledge about the quantum world – and that they collapse randomly, by
themselves. Under these premises, in the early universe it was only a question
of time before the wave functions of matter collapsed into an uneven
distribution from which stars and galaxies could form [Cartwright].

3.Pantheists
like Spinoza and
Einstein believed that physical laws are identical with divinity, but they
imagined physical laws as something beautiful, universal and eternal. The competing
vision of an absolutely contingent world emerged with the discovery that
the gas laws are of a
statistical nature, a discovery which inspired Alfred North Whitehead’s
work in metaphysics:

Laws are observed orders of succession. This doctrine defines laws
as little more than the observation of the persistence of patterns. Laws are
merely ‘statistical facts. Each observed fact is a contingently new moment.
There is no underlying principle of reason or a principle of causation [Dunham,
4].

▪The thesis that all physical laws are
merely statistical facts could not be confirmed so far. The law of conservation
of energy e.g. is not a statistical law [Vollmer 2000, 29].

▪Also the principle of causation is not refuted
so far. The probabilities of quantum events are caused by preceding quantum
events [Esfeld, 183].

On the other hand the history of physics has shown that more and
more laws that seemed to be universal and eternal are in fact contingent
[Scheibe]. All known natural laws could be

othe result of a contingent process in the early stage of our
universe

According to Quentin Meillassoux there is truly no reason for
anything:

Meillassoux
claims that mathematics is what reaches the primary qualities of things as
opposed to their secondary qualities as
manifested in perception. He tries to show that the
agnostic scepticism of those who doubt the reality of cause and effect must be
transformed into a radical certainty that there is no such thing as causal
necessity at all. This leads Meillassoux to proclaim that it is absolutely
necessary that the laws of nature be contingent (Quentin Meillassoux,
Wikipedia).

Svevo’s remark
above implies that the definition of pessimism was coined at the time of
Leibniz. Pessimism is certainly much older than the scientific revolution but the demystification
of the world in the 16th and 17th century suggested for
the first time (with scientific authority) that the suffering in this world
might be without a sense:

In the age of Enlightenment this insight was overruled by
the vision of progress, but finally the evolution of knowledge proved to be ambivalent.
Mythical gods turned (and still turn) into scientific gods who continue to
humiliate people:

2)Gerhard Vollmer
describes up to nine humiliations, resulting from nine different disciplines of
science [Vollmer 1994].

The philosophers
of Enlightenment thought that the elimination of
religious forms of guilt (sin) would be an immense relief and liberation. But
knowledge soon proved to produce new forms of guilt. In a contemporary
philosophical debate suffering cannot be charged to a divine creator any more,
but (indirectly) to all individuals who procreate. If humans put themselves in
the position of god, then the theodicy
falls back on them.

“All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening
understanding of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological,
chemical and medical progress, all of which should seem to alleviate human
suffering... tends instead to favor humanity's destruction.”(Konrad Lorenz, Wikipedia)

In his influential book, The Whig Interpretation of History
(1931), Herbert Butterfield
made a strong case against the “Wiggish” view that history
involves progressive evolution toward where we are now. This picture is
often another form of ethnocentric projection, and in fact changes of many
sorts occur for many reasons (Relativism, Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Doubts
concerning the controllability of progress are not only caused by the
complexity of culture, but also by the complexity and lacking controllability
of each individual’s life. For information on this issue see

A
utopia is a community or society possessing highly desirable or near perfect
qualities. The word was coined by Sir
Thomas More in Greek for his 1516 book Utopia
(in Latin), describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic
Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt to
create an ideal society, and imagined societies portrayed in fiction (Utopia, Wikipedia)

Utopias have a
certain potential to replace the paradises described in chapter 2.3, but they
encounter a paradox: The more a utopian society improves our living conditions,
the more painful death becomes. Death is bearable

1.if it sets an end to suffering

2.if we identify ourselves with a group and the
group survives

3.if we feel that we have seen whatever there is
to see

All these
conditions are satisfied in simple societies, but not in the current visions of
individualistic high-tech societies [Hahn, 121-124].

Things do not gain meaning by going on for a
very long time, or even forever. Indeed, they lose it. A piece of music, a
conversation, even a glance of adoration or a moment of unity have their
allotted time. Too much and they become boring. An infinity and they would be
intolerable." (Simon Blackburn, Wikipedia, Immortality)

3.
Risks

3.1 Overview

Kinds of risk

According to
our definition (chapter 2.1) cultural pessimism is associated with the
belief that there is no higher purpose in life and that we cannot create a
purpose ourselves. Cultural pessimism increases

▪the risk of alienation, because
it denies the traditional beliefs and ideals which bind the individuals of a
community together

▪the risk of fatalism, because it goes with
a distrust in the controllability of cultural evolution

▪the risk of aggression, because the
frustrating senselessness allows denying and destroying everything, including
life as a whole

We do not associate
above types of risk with mental diseases, but with comprehensible reactions to
the loss of meaning in life. Each of these reactions causes a specific kind of
individual and social suffering.

3.2 Obsession

Sade
(1740-1814)

Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Marquis de Sade, was a French aristocrat, revolutionary and writer of philosophy-laden and often violent pornography.
He was a philosopher of extreme freedom (or at least licentiousness), unrestrained by morality, religion or law, with the
pursuit of personal pleasure being the highest principle. Sade was incarcerated
in various prisons and in an insane asylum for about 32 years of his life
(…). Much of his writing was done during his imprisonment (Sade, Wikipedia)

Numerous writers and artists, especially those concerned with
sexuality, have been both repelled and fascinated by de Sade.

▪In The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of
Pornography (1979), Angela Carter provides a feminist
reading of Sade, seeing him as a "moral pornographer" who creates
spaces for women. Similarly, Susan Sontag defended both Sade and Georges
Bataille's Histoire de l'oeil (Story of the Eye) in her
essay, "The Pornographic Imagination" (1967) on the basis their works
were transgressive texts, and argued that
neither should be censored.

▪By contrast, Andrea
Dworkin saw Sade as the exemplary woman-hating pornographer, supporting her
theory that pornography inevitably leads to violence against women. One chapter
of her book Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1979) is devoted to an analysis
of Sade. Susie Bright claims that Dworkin's first novel Ice and
Fire, which is rife with violence and abuse, can be seen as a modern re-telling
of Sade's Juliette.

Michel Houellebecq, born (…) on the French island of Réunion, is
a controversial and award-winning French author, filmmaker and poet. To
admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches
back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire;
to detractors he is a peddler of sleaze and shock. Having written poetry and a
biography of the horror writer H.
P. Lovecraft he brought out his first novel Extension du domaine de la
lutte in 1994. Les particules élémentaires followed in 1998 and Plateforme in
2001. After a publicity tour for this book, which led to his being taken to
court for inciting racial hatred, he went to Ireland to write. He lived in Ireland for many
years, and now lives in Spain (Michel Houllebecq,
Wikipedia)

▪Houellebecq, unlike Camus, is obsessed by
sexuality, and the loss of it, as the key to the estrangement of modern man
(…). Michel, the hero of Plateform, believes
that men and women in Western society are no longer capable of getting on or
getting it off. He says the only logical solution is sexual tourism, in which
Western men – and increasingly women – seek the emotional and physical
fulfillment that they are denied at home by travelling to less emotionally
repressed countries in the Third World. This is the "ideal exchange",
he says (Michael
Houellebecq, The Independent)

▪Literary critics have labeled Michel
Houellebecq's novels 'vulgar,' 'pamphlet literature' and 'pornography;' he has
been accused of obscenity, racism, misogyny and islamophobia

▪Eduard von Hartmann was born in Berlin, and
educated with the intention of a military career. He entered the artillery of
the Guards as an officer in 1860, but was forced to leave in 1865 because of a
knee problem (Eduard von
Hartmann, Wikipedia)

▪Because of his knee problem, Hartmann was doing
most of his work in bed while suffering great pain (Eduard von Hartmann, Internet
Encyclopedia)

According to Hartmann human life labors under three illusions:

1)that happiness is possible in this life, which
came to an end with the Roman Empire

2)that life will be crowned with happiness in
another world, which science is rapidly dissipating

3)that happy social well-being, although
postponed, can at last be realized on earth, a dream which will also ultimately
be dissolved.

Man's only hope lies in "final redemption from the misery of
volition and existence into the painlessness of non-being and
non-willing." No mortal may quit the task of life, but each must do his
part to hasten the time when in the major portion of the human race the
activity of the unconscious shall be ruled by intelligence, and this stage
reached, in the simultaneous action of many persons volition will resolve upon
its own non-continuance, and thus idea and will be once more reunited in the
Absolute. (Eduard von Hartmann,
Internet Encyclopedia)

In The Self-Destruction of Christianity and the Religion of the
Future (1874), Hartman predicts that humanity will come to a collective
realization of the futility of their atheistic fates, and choose to bring about
their collective annihilation (Investigating
Atheism, University of Cambridge).

Hartman’s vision
is resumed by the German philosopher Thomas Metzinger, who
suggests that super-intelligent beings might tend to annihilate themselves.
That could explain why it is impossible (so far) to make contact with alien
intelligence [Ananthaswamy].

▪In 1983 Ulrich Horstmann became known for his
treatise The Beast, in which he promoted a philosophical position which
was diametrically opposed to the peace
movementZeitgeist of those years: He advocated a philosophy of
"escape of mankind" which aims for an early self-destruction of the
human race by means of the accumulated nuclear weapons found in arsenals around
the world. He pushed the pessimism and misanthropy of his mentor Schopenhauer
to the extreme. Horst's work was not, as some had suspected, a particularly
bitter satire, as was shown by the author's subsequent publications which were
written with an attitude of nihilism and extreme distaste for the world.

▪Horstmann puts forth the theory that mankind has
been pre-programmed to eliminate itself in the course of history—and also all
its memory of itself—through war (thermonuclear, genetic, biological),
genocide, destruction of it's sustaining environment, etc.

The project of annihilation
violates the rights of those, who want to survive and procreate and is
therefore an aggressive response to cultural pessimism.

3.4Fatalism

Definition

Fatalism
refers to a worldview which assumes that the events in nature and society are predestined
by fate (Latin fatum). Fatalists believe

▪that the will of man does not have the power to
change the fate or

▪that free will is only an
illusion.

Characteristic of
fatalism is the assumption that there is a universally acting instance which predetermines
the individual’s fate. This instance can be a deity whose providence directs
the world or an impersonal power in the context of a cosmic order. If the fate is
attributed solely to natural laws then we speak of determinism(Fatalismus,
Wikipedia).

Ockham
(1285-1349)

Ockham may serve
as an example that fatalism is much older than the determinism of Newtonian physics:

Theology co-operated heartily at pessimism already from the late
Middle Ages. So for example the "philosopher with the razor", the
Franciscan friar Wilhelm of Ockham (1285-1349) - regardless of his (as such
modern) conceptions in the so-called 'universalia argument' - cut any relation
of the natural human drives and primeval longings to the Ten Commandments,
which had been dictated, as it were, arbitrarily by God and could have run also
quite differently.

Well, the Catholic theology has never wholly accepted that opinion,
but it caused nevertheless a lot of confusion, the more so, as one - especially
in circles of reformed theologians - downright tried to outdo each other. From
the concern one might diminish God's greatness and majesty one left to man not
a single tiny thread of good in its own right. One even denied man the control
of its own free will, because every event had already been predestined in God's
omnipotence and prescience - a determinism which was in
no way inferior to Newtons (1643-1727) mechanistic world view (Structure and
Dynamic of the Cosmos, Ludwig Ebersberger)

Shakespeares great tragedies are dominated by fatalism. None
of them shows any belief in the “righteous government of the world”. Sometimes
his tragic heroes speak of life as ruled by inhuman, unpredictable, and
meaningless fate; and sometimes, more bitterly, cry out against vicious mankind
which is unfit to live and cruel gods, who “kill us for their sport”. Except
from possible own experience, Shakespeare found this hopeless gloom expressed
decisively and eloquently in the pessimism of Seneca (The
Classical Tradition, Gilbert Highet, 2009, p.207).

Seneca reminded his readers that natural and man-made disasters will
always be a feature of our lives, however sophisticated and safe we think we
have become (De
Botton on pessimism)

In The Sickness Unto
Death the destination of man is characterized as desperation – a desperation
which does not have to be conscious in order to be real. Desperation comes out
of the knowledge that we all have to die and that there is no salvation. The
consciousness of death creates a permanent alienation from “ordinary” life; life
can only be successful by suppressing this consciousness. Conversely – if we
consider the consciousness of death as the true (realistic) state of mind – the
permanent need of repression creates an alienation from reality [Wenzel].

Mainländer
(1841-1875)

▪Philipp Mainländer was a German poet and
philosopher (…). In his central work Die Philosophie der Erlösung (The
Philosophy of Redemption) —according to Theodor
Lessing “perhaps the most radical system of pessimism
known to philosophical literature” —Mainländer proclaims that there is no
higher meaning in life, and that “the will, ignited by the perception that
non-being is better than being, is the topmost principle of all morale.” (…)

▪In 1875 after a period of obsession with
philosophical work, Mainländer declared himself exhausted, worked-out andineffably
tired and his mental collapse — which has been compared
to the collapse Nietzsche would suffer only years later —
became apparent. Eventually, descending into megalomania and believing himself
to be a messiah
of social democracy in the night on April 1st, 1875,
Mainländer hanged himself in his residence in Offenbach. A pile of voucher
copies of The Philosophy of Redemption, which had arrived the previous
day, had served as a pedestal. He was thirty-four years old.

▪Emil Cioran was a
Romanian
philosopher and essayist (…). Exhausting his interest for
conservative philosophy early in his youth, Cioran denounced systematic thought
and abstract speculation in favor of indulgence in personal reflection and
passionate lyricism (…). Pessimism characterizes all of his works, which many
critics trace back to events of his childhood (…).

▪His works often depict an atmosphere of torment and
torture, states that Cioran experienced, and came to be dominated by lyricism
often prone to expressing violent feelings (…). Preoccupied with the problem of
death and suffering, he was attracted to the idea of suicide,
believing it to be an idea that could help one go on living, an idea which he
fully explored in On the Heights of Despair. The theme of human alienation,
the most prominent existentialist theme, presented by Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, is thus formulated, in 1932, by young Cioran:
"Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our
home?" (…).

▪He was a thinker passionate about history; widely
reading the writers that were associated with the period of "decadent".
One of these writers was Oswald Spengler who influenced Cioran's political
philosophy in that he offered Gnostic reflections on the destiny of man and
civilization. According to Cioran, as long as man has kept in touch with his
origins and hasn't cut himself off from himself, he has resisted decadence.
Today, he is on his way to his own destruction through self-objectification,
impeccable production and reproduction, excess of self-analysis and
transparency, and artificial triumph.

▪William
H. Gass called Cioran's work "a philosophical romance
on the modern themes of alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the
tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as
disease".

Philosophical
therapy is – among others – a means to overcome the
existential despair, which is caused by the loss of
religious and secular scenarios of salvation and the
corresponding loss of sense
[Van Hooft, 22]. In this context the term “therapy” relates to the cure (or
reduction) of suffering and not to the cure of a disease, see Philosophy as Therapy – A Review.

The benefit
of reason

In contrast to
the philosophy of Enlightenment, which was characterized by Condorcet’s vision
of progress, postmodern philosophy questions the benefit of reason. But what is
the alternative?

1.Drop science and technology because they are
ambivalent and their abuse cannot be prevented?

2.Resume the animistic lifestyle of
hunter-gatherers because they were (are) happier [Everett]?

3.Resume mythical world views because
they are a prerequisite for happiness [Hahn 109-124])?

Even if people
were happier and the world was safer in former times; it is impossible to turn
back the clock and resume irrational world views. For
the time being, “uncivilized” cultures require a protecting power. It is also premature to turn down reason, because reason does not
(and will possibly never) govern the world. It may be wiser to look for
philosophies that are based on reason and able to cope with cultural pessimism.
There are abundant resources in the history of philosophy for such a project,
if nothing else the philosophies (therapies) presented in this paper:

Examples:

▪Freud was a pessimist with regard to the future
of society, but developed a therapy for depression.

▪During the Roman civil wars the Stoics
turned from cultural optimism to agnosticism, but many of
them retained their motivation for virtue and duty. Even if the world will
never be “good”, it may be possible to make it “less evil” (a kind of minimal
optimism).

▪Buddha was a pessimist with regard to global suffering,
but discovered a path to the individual liberation from suffering.

Parenthesis

Was Nietzsche reasonable?
Would he have signed a reasonable social contract?

Nietzsche responded
to reasons, reflected interests and valuated them. It is questionable; however,
that he would have supported moral universalism (human rights in
particular). On the other hand we know that Nietzsche always considered several
perspectives, when he was deliberate over a question. Nietzsche may have been reasonable
amongst others.

Parenthesis
concluded

The reality
principle

Religions and utopias – in contrast to
philosophical therapy – produce a therapeutic effect by violating the reality principle.
There is, however, a difficulty in the interpretation of the term realistic:

1.Our attitude influences the result, as has been
shown in cases of self fulfilling
prophecy. If we accept cultural pessimism, then we have a negative
influence on basically optimistic people.

2.Conversely, if we promote cultural optimism,
then we may produce another welcome illusion (similar
to a religious belief) which increases the life satisfaction of the actual
generation, but decreases the life-satisfaction of future generations (e.g. by
overpopulation).

It is
unreasonable to claim that the global situation cannot change for the better;
but it is a matter of intellectual honesty to admit, that it can also turn for
the worse. The future is simply unpredictable:

History
doesn’t repeat itself……

historians
merely repeat each other.

Author unknown

Among the philosophers
mentioned above Buddha would be the best advisor in a pessimistic scenario. In
a situation of uncertainty, however, the doctrines of the Stoics, Nietzsche and
Freud are defensible as well.

Types of
therapies

Following a
table which shows the relation between the risks, caused by cultural pessimism
(chapter 3) and philosophical therapies:

1)Alienation can be seen as an undesirable form of
social disengagement, obsession as an undesirable form of social engagement.

a)The therapy of alienation requires (social)
engagement

b)The therapy of obsession requires disengagement

2)Fatalism can be seen as an expression of powerlessness,
aggression as an expression of power.

a)The therapy of fatalism requires a gain in power

b)The therapy of aggression requires a
renouncement to power

The following
table combines the risks, caused by cultural pessimism (chapter 3.1) with the
different forms of therapies:

Normative
therapies

Individualistic
therapies

Alienation

Mainländer

Cioran

Therapy
of Obsession

Buddha

Insight meditation

Aggression

Hartmann

Horstmann

Therapy
of Fatalism

Nietzsche

Existential therapy

Fatalism

Ockham

Shakespeare

Therapy
of Aggression

Stoics

Rational emotive therapy

Obsession

Sade

Houellebecq

Therapy
of Alienation

Freud

Psychoanalysis

Each of the
character traits alienation, aggression, fatalism and obsession causes a
specific kind of individual and social suffering. In this context the term
“therapy” does not relate to the cure of a disease, but to the cure (or
reduction) of suffering, which is reached by changing the way of living, see Philosophy as Therapy – Introduction.

4.2 The Therapy of Obsession – Buddha

Historical
background

▪Buddhism was developed on the basis of
traditional Hindu concepts, in particular Yoga. The oldest records of Yoga
can be found in the Upanishads.
The Bhagavad-Gita
contains direct instructions for Yoga:

Reining the senses, the heart and the spirit, entirely directed
towards salvation – liberated from desires, fears and hatred, he is
redeemed forever

(chapter 5, verse 28)

▪The most important meditation technique, Vipassana, is an
interpretation of the Patanjali
Yoga Sutra. The Vipassana technique was rediscovered by the
historical Buddha (ca. 5th century B.C.). The Buddhist therapy was traditionally – as well as Yoga – a guided
therapy under the conduct of a guru.
There is an etymological interpretation of the guru as expeller of darkness,
where darkness is seen as a lack of knowledge (avidya).

▪In many Indian myths the world is subjected to
cycles of creation and dissolution. Such a cycle represents a single day in the
life of the god Brahma. A
Brahma day can count up to 1.7 Million years on the human scale. A cyclical
world view supports the consciousness that not only the individual life, but
also all cultural achievements will be destroyed. Buddhism adopted the cyclical
world view from Hinduism, but not its polytheism.

▪There seems to be a fundamental difference in
the Vedic world view before and after Buddha and Mahavira. The ancient view
did not stress the idea of a recurrent cycle of existences (rebirth) as
characterizing the human situation. This emphasis might have come about through
the ascetic tradition, which seems to have been quite established during that
time [Soni, 220].

▪Buddhism can replace religion and create sense
in life, because it takes up religious concepts of Hinduism. In some forms of
Buddhism the dissolution of the self in meditation is interpreted as
unification with Brahman.
The renouncement to material and intellectual goods can be seen as a pre-stage
of this union.

▪Comparison with nihilism:

From the Buddhist point of view we cannot create the world “as it
should be” by means of power. The will to
power (as defined by Nietzsche) is rather a biological concept which
legitimizes and perpetuates suffering. The principles of early Buddhism, in
contrast, demonstrably reduce suffering. Buddhism is far from moral nihilism
for the following reasons:

1.The teachings of the Buddha are seen as a secure
foundation of knowledge

2.Buddhism maintains a highly developed system of
values similar to virtue ethics.

3.Buddhism emerged out of the Hindu tradition
where the meaning of Brahman is quite
different from the Western understanding of an empty world. A Buddhist’s
life is embedded in a religious context which is hardly accessible to Western
atheists. In popular forms of Buddhism the Nirvana is rather associated
with an abstract interpretation of heaven,
than with a cold and empty world.

Therapeutic
goal

▪The therapeutic goal of Buddhism is the
liberation from suffering. Following a brief
description of the teachings:

-First Noble Truth: “Life is inseparably tied to suffering.”

-Second Noble Truth: “The cause of suffering are attachments (desires) in a world where
everything changes, nothing is permanent.”

-Forth Noble Truth: “Human desire can be ended by following the Eightfold Path.”

In other words:
The Buddhist goal is not characterized by the satisfaction of desires (like
Moses’ land of milk and
honey) but by the absence of desires. In the state of Nirvana there is no suffering
from missed chances.

▪At its origin (which is Theravada) the Buddhist
concept concentrated on individualsalvation. But the Eightfold
Path is tied to the doctrine of reincarnation
and therefore implies a concept of justice: a deviation from the Eightfold
Path produces reincarnation and corresponding continuous suffering. By the liberation from attachments the Buddhist attempts to reach a
favorable reincarnation and finally the escape from the wheel of samsara.

▪The dependency of salvation on ethical knowledge
induced a controversial debate in early Buddhism. Is there a moral obligation
to actively promote ethical knowledge? The idea of a global missionary activity
rose up with the Mahajana
movement in the 2nd century.

Therapeutic
method

▪Buddhism argues that our suffering is a result
of deep attachment to uncontrollable and unreliable things. Buddhist
philosophical therapy is, in this respect, about cultivating an attitude of
“letting go”. The things that we think matter so much are not worth being
anxious, unhappy, and angry about (…). Emotions and desires are expressions of
our interpretation of the world. If our interpretation is out of accord with
the way the world really is, then unhappiness will result [Burton, 192].

▪Among the uncontrollable and unreliable things
are sexual relations and material property. Buddhist schools developed a
strategy to reduce risk by reducing social commitments. Buddha for example,
lived as celibate, wandering ascetic [Beckwith, 46, 93].

▪The Eightfold Path –
in particular meditation – can be understood as a therapeutic method for the
liberation from suffering. The core idea is a (preferably painless) elimination
of desires and corresponding risks. The elimination is less painless, if
it is reached by insight, rather than moral ban or confrontation with the
outside world. The release of irrational attachments causes a feeling of
liberation. The desire for enlightenment and the desire to help other sentient
beings are not irrational, and therefore excluded from the elimination [Burton,
194]. Consequently a Buddhist therapy also does not aim at the extinguishment
of all emotions [Burton, 195]. Progress on the path to liberation is only
possible on the basis of ethical conduct in daily life. Ethical conduct causes
a state of remorselessness and corresponding inner calm.

▪Buddhist meditation is far from the Western way
to do philosophy. Excessive reflection can initiate a morbid addiction mechanism.
Complex theories and/or a complex language have an anti-therapeutic effect.
Philosophical reflection – introduced as a means to make progress – gradually
starts to compromise the therapeutic goal. Buddhists saw through this mechanism
at an early stage. Because intellectuality is tied to language, the
Zen-Buddhist uncoupled the attachments to terms and destroyed the logic of
language. Zen-Buddhism stands in the tradition of the Advaita Vedanta. When
we name something, then we give it a tag, and by giving it a tag, we put it in
a box, limit its meaning and destroy its organic nature. Advaita, in contrast,
attempts to reconstruct the holistic nature of things.

According to the scriptures, in his lifetime, the Buddha refused to
answer several metaphysical questions. On issues such as whether the
world is eternal or non-eternal, finite or infinite, unity or separation of the
body and the self, complete inexistence of a person after nirvana and then death etc.,
the Buddha had remained silent. One explanation for this is that such questions
distract from practical activity for realizing enlightenment. Another
is that such questions assume the reality of world/self/person (…). In the Pali Canon and numerous
Mahayanasutras and tantras, the Buddha stresses
that Dharma (Truth) cannot
truly be understood with the ordinary rational mind or logic: Reality
transcends all worldly concepts (Buddhism,
Wikipedia).

▪Sometimes the Buddha used simplifications for
didactic reasons. The teaching, for instance, that there is a self or a soul
that, in future lives, reaps the consequences of its action, is intended for
hedonists and nihilists, who do not believe in karma and rebirth, in
order to motivate them to live moral lives. It is only at a higher level of the
spiritual path that they will be able to comprehend that there is no such self,
but that this does not negate the need to lead an ethical life [Burton, 206].

▪Buddhism obviously found a way how to cope with
pessimistic models of history. The physical world of Buddhism develops in a
cyclic manner but individual liberation doesn’t depend on these cycles. The
individual overcomes cultural pessimism by changing the perception of the world
and moving to a different (mystic)
state of consciousness.

Contemporary
Buddhism

Contemporary
Buddhism has two meanings:

1.The actually practiced traditions.

2.Adaptations of the doctrine to contemporary
(scientific/ethical) knowledge.

In the following
we concentrate on the latter meaning:

▪Secular Buddhism is
ethics for people who cannot accept the suffering in this world and who believe
that we are trapped in a hedonistic treadmill instead of
progressing towards (technological) salvation. The
everyday life of a secular Buddhist could be called compassionate and
risk-averse but does not ask for self-destructive asceticism [Burton, 211].

▪Secular spirituality
may (partly) replace religious spirituality. From a secular perspective the
spiritual world does not exist in the hereafter, but in the brains of all
people who strive to liberate the mind from the body. Individuals come and go,
but the vision of a world without suffering remains. The
(imagined) liberation from suffering is a possible source of well-being, just
as well as the kind of happiness that goes with life’s biological destination.

▪If one transposes Buddha’s way of thinking[Steinkellner] to nowadays then
it is plausible to assume that he would have reconciled his doctrine with a
scientific world view. If reincarnation is
seen from the perspective of genetics,
then the elimination of the desire to procreate terminates the reincarnation of
individual genes. Insofar there is an affinity between
secular Buddhism and Antinatalism.

▪Given the retreat-oriented character of the Buddhist
philosophy it is debatable if there is something like Buddhist politics. Political
engagement [Burton, 214] may take the form of non-violent
resistance but – because of the inscrutable
mechanisms of cultural evolution – the most consequent activity is probably teaching the Buddhist
doctrine at the price of one’s own liberation [Conze, 120].

4.3 The Therapy of Aggression – Stoicism

Late
Stoicism is characterized by the influence of the
Romans on Stoicism, starting with the rise of the Roman empire about 27 B.C.
The duty to the partner (marriage), the family (children) and to the state
became of prime importance. Early Stoicism, in contrast, was a retreat-oriented
ethics similar to Buddhism; see The Moral Ideal of the
Complete Life.

Historical
background

It
is plausible to assume that certain philosophical concept passed on trade
routes from the East through the Persian Gulf to Greece. About 600 B.C. Indian
traders had fixed branches in Babylon. In the 4th century B.C. – in the
following of the conquests of Alexander the Great – the Greek culture exerted a
powerful effect on the Orient, but was penetrated and reshaped in return by
oriental elements. Greek culture lost its national character and became
cosmopolitan. After the political and military conquest of Greece by Rome, the
Greek culture started the cultural conquest of the Roman Empire. But here again
there were backlashes. The Romans were a practical people. The focus of philosophy
shifted from speculation about the nature to ethics. Philosophy became philosophy
of life. Zenon from Kition (340-260 B.C.), originally a Cynics, founded in
Athens in the Stoa Poikile
a school of philosophy, where the Cynic doctrines were connected with the views
of other philosophers (especially Heraclitus and Aristotle). The Stoics divided
their system into three parts: logic, physics and ethics. Ethics was the most
important part, logic and physics only preliminary stages (Stoiker und Epikureer,
Peter Möllers PhiloLex).

▪The most memorable summary for
the Stoic worldview was left by the emperor Marcus Aurelius, the last of the
major Stoics (Meditations VII, 9):

"Everything is intertwined by a
sacred bond. Almost nothing is alien to each other. Everything which is created
is attached to each other and focuses on the harmony of the same world.
Composed of all a world exists, one God, all-pervading, a body substance, a
law, a reason, common to all rational beings, and one truth, as well as a
perfection of all these related beings, participating in the same reason."

From a primal fire, the ether, emerge
all beings. All material (hyle) is inspired by the divine reason (logos). The
Stoic doctrine is therefore equally materialistic and pantheistic. The Stoics
are convinced of the strict causality of all events (Stoa, Wikipedia)

▪The Stoic vision to free
impressions from human value judgments [Sellars, 159] accords well with modern
conceptions of “objective” knowledge.

According to the account of Stoic
epistemology made by Sextus
Empiricus, giving assent to an adequate impression is the first step away
from human opinion and towards scientific knowledge that is no longer open to
debate [Sellars, 161].

▪Humans as rational beings can
recognize the universal law. The only virtue is – being conscious of this
universal law – leading a rational life. Herein consists the only happiness. By
contrast, there is only one single evil: an unreasonable life. Everything else
which is highly appreciated by the people in general, e.g. life, health, honor,
property, or what they strive to avoid, such as illness, death, poverty,
slavery, is neither good nor bad, but indifferent (adiaphora). The task of man
is a continuous struggle against the passions. Affects lead us to believe that
indifferent and bad are valuable. The goal should be the complete overcoming of
passion. Stoicism suggests encountering all events, negative and positive with
dispassion (apatheia). Those who achieve this are the truly wise. So
far it is Cynic ethics. Under the Roman influence two important features were added:

1.The doctrine that everything external is indifferent was
limited, so that e.g. marriage, family and state, as well as science, received
a certain justification.

2.While the Cynics were ultimately selfish, the Stoics
called for a general justice and human love. The Stoics were the first in the
antiquity, who represented broad humanistic thoughts and cosmopolitanism.

▪Pantheism is not a religion
but a worldview, because it does not know a religious founder, religious
communities, sacred scriptures, institutions, rituals or dogmas. Also religious
prohibitions and rules are incompatible with the laws of nature. Pantheism
seeks to ascribe the natural laws to a supreme law, called "God" e.g.
Plato in his concept of "dynamis" and Aristotle in the "demiurge
(unmoved mover)". Various representatives of pantheism have developed
quite different hypotheses and theories. Some people see in Hinduism (Brahman)
or Sufism forms of pantheism (from Pantheismus, Wikipedia)

Therapeutic goal

▪According to Stoicismeudaimoniacan only be achievedif the peace of mind is
not disturbed by passions. The goal of a Stoic
therapy is apatheia,
a state without suffering (literally without passion), see Stoicism.Decisive for apathyisthe insight
thatallexternal goodshave no valueforspiritual
wellbeing(Affekt, Wikipedia) [Sellars, 154].

▪Stoicism tries to eliminate irrational
desires. Similar to Buddhism, the elimination of desires should be achieved
through knowledge and insight instead of moral commandments and prohibitions.

▪Desires are only irrational,
if the risks are underestimated. The insight into transience leads to a weaker
attachment to the world, but not to a complete abandonment. Passions are
generally classified as high risks and therefore avoided.In Stoicism (especially in the Roman period) the commitment to
marriage, family and politics is high, but driven by pietas, not passion.

Therapeutic method

Stoicism can be
interpreted as a twofold strategy to deal with a superior combatant (nature):

1.Identify with the combatant, perceive nature as
divine

2.Reorient aggression against the self, control
the self

The reoriented
aggression helps to gain power over the fate:

▪Independence from the inner world

The Stoics looked upon the passions as essentially irrational, and
demanded their complete extirpation (Stoicism, Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Note that the ancient meaning of passion
was anguish or suffering, i.e. passively reacting to external
events – somewhat different from the modern use of the word (Stoicism, Wikipedia).

Self-control has
an active and preventive character.

▪Independence from the outside world

Asceticism can be interpreted as a fictitious adaptation to a scarce
environment, a kind of exercise for times of privation or war. The Stoic
self-control is not self-destructive – on the contrary – it serves survival.

The controlled
aggression and the accordance with the world as it is help to tolerate
conditions that cannot be changed. The stability of the (Roman) Stoic
state was guaranteed by a perception of the social status which has much in
common with the Hindu caste
system:

▪Contemporary therapies using Stoic concepts
adopt the paramount position of reason, but not the pantheistic background. As a
consequence natural laws are considered to be
indifferent rather than “good”. The vision of a global government of reason may
have to be replaced by the vision of a sub-culture (network) of reasonable
people, an island within a sea of irrationality. The motivation to engage for
reason is based on (local) step by step improvements [Popper, 158], rather than
(global) final victory. Even if the world will never be “good” it may still
possible to make it “less evil”. If individual as well as societal projects
fail, then self-control helps to
maintain equanimity.
Peace of
mind comes out of the conviction to act in accordance with reason.

▪The Stoics were seeking for an objective judgment
and created the rule "Follow where reason leads" (see Stoicism,
Wikipedia). An objective judgment can be reached by
perceiving the world from the perspective of an impartial observer (e.g. Rawls’
Original
Position). As a consequence the ancient Stoic vision of society has to be
revised. Acontemporary adherent of reason may
overcome cultural pessimism by engaging for a Rawls-type concept
of justice.

▪Among modern psychological systems the closest
parallels to the ancient therapy of intervention into the impulse-system are
not found in psychoanalysis but in certain roughly behavioral therapies
[McEvilley, 641].

For a description of contemporary therapies which are based on
Stoicism see [Robertson].Rational Emotive
Therapy (RET) maintains that a person is rarely
affected emotionally by outside things but rather by his/her perceptions,
attitudes, or internalized sentences about outside things and events
[McEvilley, 641].

The
truths of Stoicism were perhaps best set forth by Epictetus, who in the first
century A.D. wrote in the Enchiridion:
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.”
(REBT,
Wikipedia) [Sellars, 155]

REBT as a cognitive-behavioral form of therapy
has throughout many years of general research and outcome studies received a
large degree of scientific testing, and substantial research has directly and
indirectly confirmed its hypotheses (Rational emotive behavior therapy,
Wikipedia)

4.4 The Therapy of Fatalism – Nietzsche

Historical
background

Nietzsche’s
position is best understood against the background of encounters between
neo-Kantianism and the life sciences in the 19th century (…). His
genealogy of values and his account of a will to power are as much influenced
by Kantian thought as they are by 19th century debates on teleology,
biological functions, and theories of evolution [Emden]

Furthermore
Nietzsche’s philosophy is linked to the progress of thermodynamics
in the middle of the 19th century. The discovery of the statistical nature of the gas laws gave rise to
cosmological speculations [Silk]:

▪The French mathematician Henry Poincaré
argued that regardless of the complexity of a mechanical system, if that system
consists of a finite number of parts and is allowed to function long enough
without any outside disturbance, sooner or later all the configurations that
have been attained by the system in the part are going to be repeated

▪Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence says that in a world
in which time is eternal, space is infinite and the number of atoms that fill
this space is finite and determined, it is unavoidable that the number of
configurations that these atoms achieve throughout infinite time span must not
only be finite, but also inevitably repetitious

[Polanowski, 165].

World View

A major cause of Nietzsche's continued association with nihilism is
his famous proclamation that "God is dead."
Nietzsche believed that, without God humanity is left with no epistemological
or moral base from which we can derive absolute beliefs.

But, according
to Nietzsche, the denial of absolute values doesn’t imply the devaluation of
human life and the denial of the world as it is. The value of life is more
profound than the values assigned by reason and idealism:

Any philosophy that devalues the world around us by privileging some
ideal or utopian
world necessarily devalues human life and is a threat for humanity's future.
This warning can also be taken as a polemic against
19th and 20th century scientism (Nihilism,
Wikipedia)

Nietzsche is
not a moral nihilist. Similar to the Russian nihilists, Nietzsche advocates
destruction only as a means to establish a new order. The new order promotes a
Darwinian kind of cultural evolution, driven by (unconscious) biological forces
and therefore closer to nature than Buddhism or Christianity.

Therapeutic
goal

▪The Overman:

Nietzsche advocated a remedy for nihilism's destructive effects and
a hope for humanity's future in the form of the Übermensch
(English: overman), a position especially apparent in his works Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The
Antichrist. The Übermensch is an exercise of action and life: one must give
value to existence by behaving as if one's very existence were a work of art.
Nietzsche believed that the Übermensch "exercise" would be a
necessity for human survival in the post-religious era (…)

▪Master morality:

Another part of Nietzsche's remedy for nihilism is a revaluation of
morals — he hoped that we are able to discard the old morality of equality and
servitude and adopt a new code, turning Judeo-Christian
morality on its head (…). The only true sin to Nietzsche is that which is aimed
at the expression of one's power over oneself. Virtue, likewise,
is not to act according to what has been commanded, but to contribute to all
that betters a human soul. Nietzsche attempts to reintroduce what he calls a master
morality, which values personal excellence over forced compassion
and creative acts of will over the herd instinct, a moral outlook he
attributes to the ancient Greeks. The Christian moral ideals developed
in opposition to this master morality, he says, as the reversal of the value
system of the (Roman) elite social
class (Nihilism,
Wikipedia)

▪The truth:

Nietzsche's
philosophy shares with nihilism a rejection of any perfect source of absolute,
universal and transcendent values (…). However, recognizing the chaos of
nihilism, he advocated a philosophy that willfully transcends it. Furthermore,
his positive attitude towards truth as a vehicle of faith and belief
distinguishes him from the extreme pessimism that nihilism is often associated
with (Nihilism, Wikipedia)

Therapeutic
method

▪Competition plays an important role in
Nietzsche’s concept of psychic health. He refers to the agonal
nature of the Hellenistic culture, where events like the Ancient Olympic Gameshad a religious dimension.
Although Nietzsche counts on the unconscious as a driving force, he strives to
transform the biological competition into a cultural one. Master
morality is the principle that allows succeeding in the cultural
competition.

▪A contemporary interpretation of master
morality is simply the secular worldview. According to Nietzsche the
fight for truth (and for the dominance of truth) has a therapeutic
effect in all areas of life, because it makes the individual stronger. The
denial of religions and utopias relates Nietzsche to Existential therapy.

▪According to Nietzsche, the discovery (the
truth) that the individual is able to create his/her own values is an immense
gain in power. The individual becomes independent and, as far as self-created
values are accepted by others, attains a dominant position.

▪The will to survive constructs meaning in
seemingly hopeless situations and develops an almost unlimited creativity in
finding positive interpretations of the world. Nietzsche’s remedy for cultural
pessimism is cultural perfectionism. Transhumanism – which is
reminiscent of overman
– may eventually lead to the liberation from suffering.

4.5 The Therapy of Alienation – Freud

Psychoanalysis
can be practised on the basis of free
association and hermeneutics,
without using an expert language and without being fixed on Freudian concepts like
the Oedipus complex.
Many people undergo psychoanalysis for improving self-knowledge and not
for being cured from a mental disease. Freud is seen as a philosopher in this
paper because of his radical quest for knowledge and because hermeneutics has
its origin in philosophy [Cavell, 289-291].

Historical
background

The origin of psychoanalysis is dream
interpretation, i.e. the realization that there are mental processes which
cannot be controlled, but possibly have a meaning for practical life.

▪The oldest written record of
an intellectual confrontation with dreams is about 4,000 years old. The
deliberately targeted interpretation of dreams is known since ancient times; it
was particularly highly estimated by the Babylonians and Assyrians. The first
book of Genesis tells of the most talented interpreter of dreams Josef. Even
older are the interpretations of Gilgamesh’s dreams by his friend Enkidu. The
Hellenists developed a real desire to discover forecasts in dreams (e.g. Socrates’
never erring Daimonion). The Christian church demonized dreams as
diabolical temptations. The scientists of Enlightenment payed little attention
to dreams and did not include them in scientific discussions. Only the Romantic
discovered the relationship of dreams to fairy tales and to the unconscious (Traumdeutung,
Wikipedia)

▪The term unconscious
was used the first time in 1751 and then interpreted in German Romanticism as
"unfathomable source of creativity and passions". But to its present
meaning it was brought by the famous Viennese psychoanalyst Professor Dr.
Sigmund Freud in his psychoanalysis. Here the unconscious was seen as a realm
unknown to the conscious, a kind of "other stage" (…). For Freud, the
unconscious is a system that is capable to express itself through the dream,
through mistakes, through wordplays and not least by free association (...). This
was not in itself new, since already in ancient times one assumed that there
are mental activities foreign to the conscious. Later the philosopher René
Descartes used this idea for the principle of duality (body and mind as
opposing instances: the conscious as the area of the rational as opposed to the
world of unreason). Similar comments were also made by the philosophers Blaise
Pascal and Baruch Spinoza, who saw the autonomy of consciousness limited by
unknowable and unfortunately often destructive forces. On this basis emerged treatments
such as magnetism. At the end of the 19th century Anton Mesmer recommended to
understand the unconscious as a spin-off of the conscious, to which one could
gain access through hypnosis or suggestion. It is striking that psychological
aspects were formerly the domain of philosophers with scientific interests. Psychologists
(as such) did not exist. And the medics were necessarily more organically oriented,
even if they incorporated mental issues in their considerations. And so it
remained until the 19th century the task of philosophers to illuminate the
"dark side of the psyche". Examples: Wilhelm von Schelling,
Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Only thereafter physicians – particularly
from the physiological discipline like J.F. Herbart, H.v. Helmholtz, G.
Fechner, W. Wundt and C.G. Carus – became familiar with the issue [Faust].

▪At the societal level the emphasis
is on the rejection of religious and secular scenarios of salvation. Salvation
is considered as a collective delusion, which functions as an external
reinforcement of individual delusions:
"We analysts," writes Freud, "strive for the most complete and
profound analysis of our patients, we do not want to give them relief by
including them in the Catholic, Protestant or socialist community. We try to
enrich him from his own inside, by liberating the energies that are locked in
his unconscious by repression, and those other energies, which are used by the
ego in a sterile manner to maintain the repression (...) Is it not more
economical to support defects from the outside (by integration into a community
or drugs, M.H.), than to reform the inside? I do not know it, but I know something
else. In psychoanalysis there existed from the beginning a connection between
cure and research, knowledge led to success, one could not treat without experiencing
something new, there was no enlightenment without experiencing it’s beneficial
effect " [Hampe 2007].

▪Sigmund
Freud could be described as a cultural pessimist who shared many of
Schopenhauer's ideas. He saw human existence as being under constant attack
from both within the self, from the forces of nature and from relations with
others. The following quote, from Civilization and its Discontents,
is perhaps the best example of his cultural pessimism:

“We can cite many such benefits that we owe to the much despised era
of scientific and technical advances. At this point, however, the voice of
pessimistic criticism makes itself heard, reminding us that most of these
pleasures follow the pattern of the "cheap pleasure" recommended in a
certain joke, a pleasure that one can enjoy by sticking a bare leg out from
under the covers on a cold winter's night, then pulling it back in..... What
good is a long life to us if it is hard, joyless and so full of suffering that
we can only welcome death as a deliverer?” (Pessimism, Wikipedia)

Therapeutic
goal

▪The goal of therapy, which
works with free association, is the acquisition of spontaneity, respectively
the liberation of repressed drives. This objective is rational, as far as the
spontaneity does not lead to the blind tolerance of risks. Depression may have
a protective function and the German word for passionLeidenschaft (Leiden
= suffering) is well founded. The devastating effect of passion led i.a. to the
Stoic emphasis on self-control. The psychoanalytic discovery of unconscious
biological needs almost inevitably leads to a confrontation with cultural norms
and to an inner disunity. Often in the course of the analysis one form of suffering
replaced by another.

▪Certain patients (especially
philosophically interested ones) explain the cognitive process – which was
thought as a means to an end – as an end in itself and undergo longstanding
psychoanalytic treatments without measurable success (measured in terms of
reduced suffering). This therapeutic goal is rational as long as the insight,
which is gained by the therapy, compensates the psychological strain.

▪Freud’s well known slogan “We can change
neurotic misery into real misery” makes clear that he had no intention to solve
psychic problems by means of unrealistic optimism. Cultural pessimism should be
overcome by reverting to biological resources and not by utopias. The unconscious simply
ignores the future. Freud’s biography illustrates that it is possible to be an
optimist in personal matters and a pessimist with regard to the future of
society.

Therapeutic
method

▪The method of philosophical psychoanalysis
differs from pure psychoanalysis by its rejection of jargon. The concepts of the unconscious, association and
interpretation date back to ancient concepts of knowledge acquisition and can
therefore be attributed to philosophy.The anamnesis of the Freudian kind (not all of
them) resembles a novel, because it expresses the absolutely individual in a
common language, which is not a technical jargon or only in a very limited
sense [Hampe 2007].The more such a novel is infiltrated by the technical jargon of
psychoanalysis (e.g. introjection, Oedipus complex, etc.) the more it goes on
distance to philosophical therapy and the more it becomes psychotherapy.

▪Free association is focused
on the acquisition of spontaneity, i.e. the therapist does not direct the cognitive
process in a specific direction. The extension of knowledge is not
predetermined or limited, so that the behavior cannot be predicted. The therapy
extends knowledge like a journey of discovery. The next destination emerges
from the new knowledge which is acquired.

▪Psychoanalysis overcomes
cultural pessimism by means of individual optimism. Even in a culture that is
destined to decay, it is possible to find (individual) sense in life.

There are four
conflicting types of philosophical therapies. Following a well-known exponent
of each type:

1)Normative Therapies

Normative
therapies are directed against the kind of suffering, which is caused by
uncontrolled desires (e.g. obsession and aggression). The interests of the
individual (the struggle for love and power) are morally degraded. The
pessimistic worldview is overcome by changing the perception of the world:

a)Therapy of obsession: Buddha. Pessimism is
overcome by liberating from desires.

b)Therapy of aggression: Stoics. Pessimism is overcome
by adopting an “objective” view.

2)Individualistic Therapies

Individualistic
therapies are directed against the suffering, which is caused by the repression
of desires (e.g. alienation and fatalism). The interests of the individual are
morally defended.

a)Therapy of alienation: Freud. The pessimistic
world view is simply ignored by falling back on biological resources.

b)Therapy of fatalism: Nietzsche. Pessimism is overcome by cultural perfectionism.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Michael Hampe
for the inspiring conversations in the context of this paper.